


What tomorrow brings

by lbmisscharlie



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Identity Issues, Infidelity, M/M, Mutual Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 03:08:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3634374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yes,” Athelstan says. “You Northmen are very good at climbing.” Ragnar laughs, the same laugh he gives at the end of a good battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What tomorrow brings

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between 3x05 and 3x06, but was written before the events of 3x07 (which perhaps give it a slightly different air).

“Tell me about Paris.” Ragnar’s voice, in the dark, settles over his skin like a heavy mantle, a comfort, a weight. 

“Again?” Athelstan says, his voice a mere whisper. The question is only to hear Ragnar ask once more; he’ll tell all he knows again and once more, as many times as his king, his lord, wishes to hear.

“I do not yet tire of it,” Ragnar affirms. His fingers stroke over Athelstan’s cheek, blind in the dark and too near his eyes. Athelstan tilts his chin up but does not move away.

“Its walls are very high,” he begins. “When I first set my eyes upon it, I thought surely it could only be the kingdom of God.” Ragnar snorts, very softly, and Athelstan persists through a wry smile. “They emerge, white and shimmering, out of the river, and then surely to the heavens.”

“To the heavens,” Ragnar repeats, drily. 

“Well,” Athelstan says. He turns his face into Ragnar’s hand; Ragnar cups his cheek, strokes his fingers down his temple. “Higher than a man could climb, at least.”

“Higher than monks could climb, perhaps,” Ragnar asserts. In one shocking movement, his fingers twist in Athelstan’s hair, pulling his head back, and Ragnar twists and straddles him. “Not higher than a Norseman.”

Athelstan presses his lips together. His neck stretches, painfully, under the pull of Ragnar’s hand, and his cock throbs under Ragnar’s weight. He stays very still, though he wants to press himself up, to rub and rut. Ragnar likes him still – at least at first.

“Yes,” Athelstan says. “You Northmen are very good at climbing.” Ragnar laughs, the same laugh he gives at the end of a good battle. He has laid aside his armor, his battle vest, his sword, the Wessex helmet he stole off a drunk soldier which perched so oddly on his head. When he leans forward, Athelstan can feel his cock between their stomachs, warm and hard already.

Ragnar’s chambers are rivaled only by King Ecbert’s; fitting, for a pair of kings. They’re offered in friendship, Ecbert says, and Athelstan does want to believe so. Ragnar does not; Athelstan wonders when he last trusted a professed friend. 

Athelstan himself has given him many reasons to doubt.

Ragnar’s hand loosens in his hair, enough that Athelstan can roll his hips up, just slightly, to feel the way Ragnar’s thighs tighten around his hips. In the darkness, his eyes seek out Ragnar’s, but all he sees is his dark shadow outline. Were it not for the heat of Ragnar’s buttocks against his thighs, his tight, tense weight holding Athelstan down, he might think him some dark devil come to tempt him.

He might yet be.

_We’re all free to do as we please,_ Ragnar had said. Athelstan’s vows were broken long ago. 

He needn’t be here; he has his own chambers in the castle. Judith’s husband has returned, but they do not share their nights. He might go elsewhere.

One hand pressed hard against his chest, Ragnar rocks his hips, tense coiled heat rutting against Athelstan’s cock. He gasps; Ragnar laughs. 

Under his hands, Ragnar’s thighs are tight: hard swells of the sea. He surges up; their mouths don’t quite meet. Ragnar’s laughter shakes them both. He doesn’t laugh enough, now, so Athelstan bites his jawline, his beard, his neck, and tugs at the lacing of his trousers, and feels the tremors run through their bodies.

His cock is warm and heavy in Athelstan’s hands, and already hard. He holds it in his palm, as if taking its measure; it is, perhaps, a small pleasure to leave Ragnar to wait, but pleasure nonetheless. With an impatient huff, Ragnar rocks forward into his hand, shoving at Athelstan’s tunic until he is bare to the chest. 

Athelstan does not laugh, but grins to know Ragnar’s mind. Curling his fingers, he presses Ragnar’s cock to his stomach; as Ragnar rocks his hips, each stroke rubs his cock against Athelstan’s skin, slick with sweat, and through the grip of his hand. It’s a strange way of finding pleasure, even for Athelstan, who has less experience than some, but Ragnar seeks it out. When he reaches his climax, he falls forward, fluid in sticky streaks across Athelstan’s chest. 

Athelstan would not say it, but he wonders if the way Ragnar’s fluid marks him is what pleases the most: pagan runes on his Christian skin. 

A warrior bent in such vulnerable pleasure is a rare and precious sight, and Athelstan would curse the darkness of the night but for the way Ragnar’s breath beats against his cheek, and the warmth spreading between them, and how Ragnar drags his hand through the fluid on Athelstan’s stomach, coating his fingers, and hitches his arm back with a jerk to pulls Athelstan’s trousers open. 

His hand is calloused, and rough, and familiar: he has gained more scars since the first time he touched Athelstan like this, sometime in the year after Lagertha left. He had been angry at Aslaug, and Athelstan hadn’t cared, and Ragnar had kissed his temple, roughly, after, and said, “You’re truly a Norseman now.”

And now Ragnar takes his cock in hand, and the cross Athelstan wears, once more, falls into the hollow of his throat, and when he reaches his peak he can only twist and jerk under Ragnar’s weight holding him down.

Ragnar wipes his hand on the bolster to their side and drags himself off to lie next to Athelstan. He misses Ragnar’s weight. 

“Will you return to Kattegut?” The question is asked curiously, but Athelstan does not think he imagines the desire in Ragnar’s voice. He had already decided, but had he not, that would set his mind.

“Yes,” he answers. “I will stay with you.” Ragnar murmurs something – assent, pleasure – and shifts so they touch, shoulders, elbows, thighs. 

_We are all free to do as we please._. He could stay, but Wessex has never been his home, and Northumbria is no longer.

Ragnar grunts, kicks his ankle against Athelstan’s. Athelstan curls into him, and drags a heavy Mercian blanket over them both. This has been, these long years, his rightful place: at Ragnar’s side.


End file.
